


Fingernails

by CloudDreamer



Series: Theater of Tragicomedy [17]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Loneliness, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:28:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23149276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: To be Calliope is nothing at all.
Relationships: Calliope/Roxy Lalonde
Series: Theater of Tragicomedy [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1383865
Kudos: 12





	Fingernails

You stop mattering sometimes.

It happens all at once, and it happens slowly. You’d be doing something simple like brushing your teeth, and then you wouldn’t be doing anything at all. It’d take the gentle knock of Roxy at the bathroom door if you were lucky, or you’d come back to yourself with his hands around your shoulders, his voice in your ear saying your name. Calling into the void.

You see things. 

You see things in Jade. You see the you that you could be, and it scares you. She scares you.

She’s your friend, and the ghost inside her scares you. You’re a ghost too, you know, and there’s nothing to fear from the dead. Nothing like there is to fear from the living. And there you go again. There is blood buried beneath your fingertips and you can’t see what colour it is. You shake your head, and it’s green. Lime green. Yours. Not his.

You paint blood and guts and chocolate cake with too much sugar. More cake than anyone could ever eat. There is dancing and games and there is more than enough love to go around. There is a war, but it is one fought with the passion of the living, over a future that matters to them. They do not need to heal from old scars when they are freshly injured. They have no time to scratch their chitinous skin open, when they’ve just sewn it shut.

You are alone. You are loneliness. He is there, and he is smiling. You think you love him. If you are capable of love. If dying and coming back hadn’t stolen your warmth, if you had any warmth to begin with. He bleeds red, like your brother did, and he’s warm. Your brother was hot. You can’t think his name, even now. You don’t sleep. You have the nights to yourself. You don’t cry about it. 

You don’t cry, but you stand there looking into space. The stars are so beautiful, and you are so small. He looks with you, but he doesn’t see the same thing. He doesn’t see how scary it is, that you could just disappear in that abyss because the abyss is his home. Isn’t it supposed to be yours too? There’s a hole inside you he can’t fill. You were meant to be something, inspire something, and now she’s here and she’s important and you’re so small.

You hold him too tightly sometimes. You don’t realize you’ve bruised his wrist till he forces your thumb up. You can’t bring yourself to say anything. You should be sorry. Does it matter if you are? Does any of this matter?

Do you want it to matter?


End file.
